Development of autoradiography for Dismantling & Decommissioning applications

Sylvain Leblond (GANIL)

In France the R&D for decommissioning is facing several technical challenges which require to be addressed quickly, due to the upcoming end of operations of many nuclear facilities during the next decade. In particular, the development of efficient methods to locate and characterize radioactive contamination is critical for most of the stages of the decommissioning process. Recently, several industrial solutions have been developed to provide an efficient way to image the contamination by long range emitters (such as gamma rays or neutrons). Yet, there is currently no device capable to locate and characterize precisely the contamination by short range emitters such as alpha or beta particle.

After a brief overview of D&D status in France, the developments performed in CEA Saclay to tackle this challenge will be presented. In a first part, the survey of surface contamination using autoradiography methods will be detailed. The results obtained on the field with phosphor screens will be discussed with regard to the specific requirements of dismantling operations. In a second part, the industrial development of a new generation of short range camera will be presented. The choice of the detection principle will be discussed as well as the first experimental results obtained in laboratory. The presentation will be concluded by an overview of the project status.

Practical information:

11h00 GANIL seminar room (105)
Coffee will be served 15mn before